Cancelled mystery Nokia device appears in 'spy' shots

The image above was posted on Eldar Murtazin's LiveJournal. Eldar has access to prototypes of phones long before they're available in the shops and as seen in this case, he also has access to devices that have been cancelled and will never see the light of day.

From what I can see, this is a Nokia device. I haven't seen phones from other manufacturers that feature the swirly 'i' that can be found on the '0' button on many Nokia devices. I can also gather that the device doesn't run S60 as there's no standard S60 menu button. S40 maybe... or even Android?

Could this be the start of something new? The design of the device is different from other Nokia devices and even slightly resembles the vertu line of devices, maybe Nokia will be changing the way they design their S40 phones in the future? Maybe this is S40's equivalent of the N81? Time will tell, I guess.

According to this thread in the Mobile-Review forums, Eldar will be publishing a 'review' on a bunch of scrapped devices sometime soon.

How to update your Samsung i8510 INNOV8 firmware

Samsung's S60-powered i8510 has been out for a few months now and has proved to be rather popular. Unfortunately, the device has quite a few bugs that prevent it from reaching its true potential as the most highly specced S60 device to date. Even more unfortunate, though, is that Samsung don't currently offer any official methods for users to update to the latest available firmwares at home.

THIS METHOD OF UPDATE IS NOT OFFICIALLY SUPPORTED BY SAMSUNG. IF YOU WISH TO UPDATE YOUR I8510 USING SAMSUNG-APPROVED SOFTWARE, CLICK HERE.

The Samsung i8510 users website have an article that provides everything you need to upgrade your i8510's firmware at home. Please remember that this process is totally unofficial and is not recommended for anyone who isn't comfortable with manually updating their device's firmware.

There is no changelog available for this firmware revision and it's apparently intended for users in eastern European countries. It does support the English language.

Head over to Samsung i8510 users to download all 6 files and then follow the included user guide.

Good luck!

Samir's HandWave launched

Finally, after over 2 months of waiting, HandWave is available for download! HandWave is an application that uses the front camera of your S60 device to detect movements from the user's hands and then registering these movements as corresponding keypresses on the device. You could call it a touchless interface for S60...

I've been using HandWave for a few minutes now and I am rather impressed. It's very accurate, even in dark surroundings. There's a little box at the top left of the screen that can be used to show when a movement is registered.

Users may want to turn this off though as it will obstruct some of the information on your screen. Unfortunately, such an option does not exist in this beta.

I had no problems using HandWave to control my phone from atleast 1 meter away so this could be great for using with TV-Out. The application can be optimised for different uses by changing the values of the pixel and image 'sensibility'.


HandWave is a great application that can be useful but I know i'll very likely be using it just to show off!

HandWave is currently donationware, meaning you can only get it by donating to Samir, the author of the application. You can donate as little or as much as you wish. After donation, a download link will be sent to you instantly.

Get HandWave HERE.

Samir's AikonLab is alive!

Ask any person on Symbian-Freak who their favourite individual software developer is and you'll very likely be given one of two answers: Wook or Samir. Wook is a talented developer that likes to get the most out of his S60 device by not adhering to the limitations imposed by Symbian Signed while Samir is a Symbian celebrity who is probably best known for his accelerometer driven applications like RotateMe. As some of you may recall, Samir launched AikonLab back in September but was never to update it again until yesterday, November 7th.

Samir has now made nAlertMe available for download on his site. nAlertMe is a freeware security application that uses the inbuilt accelorometer to raise an audible alarm if your phone is moved from a stationary position. The alarm can only be deactivated after the user positions their phone in a pre-determined sequence of orientations.

Here's a video of nAlertMe in action:

nAlertMe
Uploaded by AikonLab

You can grab nAlertMe by heading over to AikonLab and then navigating to the projects page.

Now all I'm waiting for is news on HandWave... Godspeed Samir!